Taking a deep breath, I blew the candle out and then turned my head to smile at Xavier. He smiled back, and before I even knew what I was doing, I lifted my chin and kissed him, quickly and chastely, on the lips.
For one moment, I was flooded with the warm smell of him, with the soft pressure of his mouth on mine, and the next he was moving away, the warmth of his body gone, his back to me as he walked up to the coffee machine and filled it with water.
It’s a completely normal thing for a parent and child to do, to kiss on the mouth, but it left me breathless and heated.
No matter how hard I try to fight this growing feeling of attraction, it just won’t go away. If anything, boundaries seem to be slipping and blurring between us, making it worse. In the past few days since I’ve been grounded, we’ve spent more and more time together-laughing, touching, hugging… Every night this week Xavier has shut his computer early, and we’ve watched television together while snuggling on the couch.
I tell myself that I’m craving love. That, as my father, Xavier wants to give it to me. He wants to hold me and make me feel safe and secure. But the truth is, I’ve become obsessed with these hours on the couch, breathing in his smell and feeling the rise and fall of his rib cage against me. Every day we’ve gotten a little bit closer, stayed up a little bit later. It feels easier each day to curl in against him and nuzzle into his warmth. It’s become easier for me to lay my hand across his chest, easier for him to rest his cheek against the top of my head. Last night, preoccupied with the police drama we were watching, he’d been mindlessly and unknowingly tracing light circles on the bare skin of my hip where my t-shirt and shorts left a gap. Just the graze of his thumb felt like fire.
I know things can’t go on like this, but I’ve started to crave the touch of his skin so much it’s like a fever. I want to run my hand under his shirt and feel the hair there, feel the electric contact of his bare skin under my fingertips. I’m possessed by a growing and extremely inappropriate physical attraction. It’s not just that Xavier is a hulking specimen of a man, it’s the way he takes care of me, the shelter of his arms, the strength of his commitment to me. On the one hand, I wish things could change between us, that he could somehow see me as a woman. And on the other hand, there’s nothing I love more than being his little girl. I want both, simultaneously, and there’s no way it ever makes sense or is anything less than creepy. I’m perverted.
I tried to chase away those thoughts as I removed the candle from the bun and took a bite, remembering how Xavier was always big on birthdays. Before he and my mom met, my birthday had occasionally been forgotten. But never with Xavier. He always acts like it’s the most important day of the year.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, Xavier produced a card and small, iconic blue box-jewellery from Tiffany’s. I blushed with pleasure and surprise as I read the card: ‘To Hazel, love Daddy xo,’ it said in his scrawling handwriting, the word Daddy an embarrassing barometer of how fucked up my thoughts have been lately.
He poked the jewellery box with a finger, pushing it closer to me. “Happy birthday, baby.”
Inside the box was another box, a light blue clamshell, and inside that was a plumply cushioned diamond on a delicate platinum chain.
“Xavier,” I had breathed, lifting the precious, glittering thing out of the clamshell and dangling the chain off my finger. A million points of light bounced off the jewel.
He’d quirked his mouth. “How about calling me Dad?”
“Dad,” I’d repeated. “It’s beautiful.”
“Do you like it?” He reached for my hand where it lay on the counter and ran a thumb over the top of it. “Your mother always loved diamonds.”
He took the chain from my hand and walked behind me, lowering it over my head. I lifted my hair and he closed the necklace clasp, taking a moment to softly kiss the back of my neck just under my hair before running his hands over my shoulders.
I got up from the stool and wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him again-firmly and intentionally on the lips. It was just slightly more of a kiss than the one moments before. I had pressed my lips against his, pulling him in tight with my arms around his neck…and he’d broken away with a little laugh and turned his head, whispering, “I love you, Hazel,” in my ear.
“I love you too, Daddy,” I’d said, for one moment letting it be that naughty and that wrong. I leaned into it.
I do love my Daddy, whatever that means. And tonight, now that I’m eighteen, it feels like everything could change between us.